


Pillow Talk

by ohrightwelldone



Category: Father Ted
Genre: Dougal just really likes Ted, Fluff, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Late Night Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 10:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20505290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohrightwelldone/pseuds/ohrightwelldone
Summary: Dougal loves bedtime chats with Ted, especially when it turns to new literature. It's just another night-in with the lads!





	Pillow Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't written fanfic in a long time, and my first attempt at Father Ted. I do NOT feel equipped to handle these characters, but I adore them so much that I had to try. I hope to write a longer one in the future, but this was a good way to get to know these characters. I apologize if they come across OOC - I tried to keep them in character as much as possible! Can be read as platonic - I did set it up with Ted/Dougal in mind, but blink and you'll miss it. Hope you enjoy!

“How’s your book then, Ted?”

From across the end table Ted gave him a quick glance. Ted looked as he often looked at bedtime: hair parted to the side, bangs drooping over his forehead, blue striped pyjamas that were fuzzier than the carpet. Tonight, Ted had on his reading glasses, something that Dougal quite liked though Ted hated the very mention of them. Altogether, Dougal thought he looked like the most comfortable person in the world. Almost like a pillow (with glasses).

“Oh, I’m re-reading this one.” He flashed Dougal the cover: Stephen King’s _ The Shining. _ “Ever since that whole Nazi fiasco I haven’t wanted to pick it up at all, but enough time has past. And it’s the perfect book to start in the fall.” 

“Ah, right. Back when you were a racist.”

“_ I was not - _I was just - ” Ted’s mouth formed a very thin line, but then he nodded and gave a great sigh. “It was a poorly thought joke made with very bad timing.”

“Have you spoke with the Yin family at all since then?”

“No, not really, not since the Chinatown section broke apart from the island and floated off. The ferry service is pretty spotty, so I think they go to Rugged Island for shopping and all that now.”

Dougal took a fit of giggles. “I had forgotten that. Oh, man. They have to see that great, big idjit skateboarding everywhere. He probably crashes into their garden all the time!”

Ted grinned. “Poor ol’ Cyril. No wonder he’s like that, living with Dick Byrne. Now,” and he gave Dougal a firm pointing at, “there,_ THERE’S _a nazi if there ever was one.”

“There was loads of them, Ted. Bunch of mad fellas. They're always in the films.”

“I _ know _ , Dougal. I only meant Dick Byrne is just like a...really bad Nazi, without being a Nazi, although he's _definitely_ a racist. And a homophobe. So...really...very much like a Nazi when you think about it.”

“Ah,” said Dougal, not understanding.

But here’s what he liked so much about Ted - he could have continued reading his book having fully answered Dougal’s question long ago. Instead, Ted looked down at the book in Dougal’s hands and asked, “And what are you reading?” He even let his own book close over on his finger. When Ted asked him questions, he really wanted to know. Ted was good like that.

“Well, to be honest with you, I’m completely lost,” Dougal began. “It’s one of the Goosebumps series, which have never failed to please.” (Ted would know this, seeing as how Dougal personally reviewed every single one in his possession to him in vigorous detail.) “This one is all about a school trip to a scary wax museum, but the story has already ended five times! Then it just keeps going on the next page, but everything’s different! I don’t know, Ted. It’s getting a bit too surreal for my taste.”

Ted’s dark eyebrows furrowed together. “Could you hold up the cover?”

So Dougal did, and Ted tsked. “Dougal, that’s a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. You have to follow the instructions at the bottom of the page. Like there.”

Now Dougal’s eyebrows were knotting together. “But you said to ignore those.”

“When they’re talking about unimportant stuff, like annotating sources or translations, like in the Bible or something. But here they actually matter, they tell how you can make the next choice, which will then affect how the story goes.”

He couldn’t help it - Dougal felt a great rush at the very idea and struggled not to bounce where he sat. “You mean I can choose what happens? Like a video game or something? Oh, wow!” Books usually just threw words at him, and if he was lucky, a colourful picture or a nice sketch, but to have a book ask _ you _what it should be about? Dougal was already flipping back to the beginning. As soon as he saw the black print however, his shoulders drooped as low as they could go. “Oh no,” he moaned dreadfully.

“‘Oh, no?’ What?”

“Ted, I’m awful at decisions. You heard about that funeral I did around Christmas.”

Ted rubbed the back of his neck, a wince tightening his features. “I think people living in Gdansk heard about that particular funeral, Dougal.”

Dougal looked back down at page one. There was no decision to make at the bottom, it simply said to turn the page. That just meant a decision could be waiting on the next one. The kids always knew what they were doing in this series - how could a priest know what to do in a spooky wax museum? Ted was better for things like this. Ted was also a priest, but he actually seemed to believe that whole thing, and Dougal figured he had to understand something that Dougal was always missing in the whole Catholicism thing. Yes, Ted would know what to do!

Well, when Dougal really thought about it, things never went _ better _when Ted was in the lead, but Dougal always felt...safer. As long as it got the two of them back to the parochial house with Father Jack in his chair and Mrs. Doyle with her tea tray, Dougal never minded the bumps and disasters and injuries that came along. At the end of the day, his best friend always got things back to normal, just as they should be.

“What if...what if I read the story, and you made the decisions, and that way we can beat the book together?”

The quiet in their shared room was suddenly very loud, overwhelming. Dougal watched as Ted pondered his offer, and ever so slowly got a spark in his eye. Soon enough, _ The Shining _was on the end table. “Alright, then,” Ted said, wriggling into a comfortable position against the headboard and folding his hands on his lap. Ted never could pass up anything resembling a challenge. “Let’s do this.”

So excited he was, Dougal barely touched the floor before vaulting across Ted’s legs. “Christ, Dougal! Watch your limbs, will you?” Ted might as well have said that to the ceiling, for all the notice Dougal took. Instead, Dougal scrambled as close to Ted’s side as he could without pushing him off the edge. He opened the book to page one, and glanced at Ted from the corner of his eye. There was a stony serious to his consideration of the book, and paired with his reading glasses, Dougal thought he looked like the smartest priest in Ireland.

Dougal began to read aloud.

\-------

They died twenty minutes later when the book ordered them to do an arbitrary coin toss that somehow made them fall into a vat of hot, bubbling wax. Dougal sat with a great pout, readying to close the book in defeat. 

“Give me that,” and Ted yanked the book out of his hands, mumbling: “feckin’, cheatin’...too lazy to write an actual plot…”

When all seemed lost, Ted simply flipped back to the original page and chose the other option, because Ted ignored rules like that. Dougal smiled. As gingerly as he would handle his hamster Ronaldo, he accepted the book back from Ted. He read on. And if he let his shoulder rest along Ted’s, and his hand sit against Ted’s, well, Ted never said anything of it.

By 3 AM, they had died four times, but finally survived once. The horrors of the wax museum were left in a great, blazing fire. The kids were making their way home. In the wee morning hours, at Ted’s side, Dougal thought it was all that mattered.


End file.
